Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

Macaulay's 'Utilitarian' Indian Penal Code 147
for accomplishing epic works of social and political reconstruction, whether
at home or abroad. Evangelicals looked to flush out and revitalize native
souls with Christian morality and English education; Utilitarians sought to
satisfy their temporal needs by the provision of efficient government and
sound laws.
It was into this situation, heavy with the expectation of social, economic
and political developments in India, facilitated by the 1833 Act, that Macaulay
was recruited to the central post of legal member of the Governor-General's
Council. 4 Yet he was not an overwhelmingly obvious choice. Why Macaulay
was chosen and why he accepted the appointment is far from self-evident. One
can approach such questions by asking what qualities might be included in any
specification for the post of legal member: most naturally, perhaps, a lawyer
with substantial expertise in framing legislation; someone with experience and
the demonstrated capacity for the routine grind and graft, so much a part of
lawmaking; someone not unlike Sir James Stephen, then a highly influential
and moderately reformist force in the Colonial Office. 5 Indeed, both his
famous sons, Leslie and Fitzjames, testify that not only was he offered
the post but that Macaulay 'strongly advised' him to take it. 6 Although
Macaulay makes no recorded reference to this it seems highly unlikely that
it is without some substance, and that Sir James was not at least sounded out
on the possibility, if not actually made a firm offer. However, whether first or
second choice, after initial resistance from a minority of directors of the East
India Company Macaulay was appointed. 7
Most clearly in his favour was a familiarity with Indian affairs, gained
as Secretary to the Board of Control. He also brought to the position an
unpromising intellectual flashiness, not obviously suited to years of solid
legislative labour in service of the Company under an Indian sun. Macaulay's
unusual intellectual capacities revealed themselves early in life. One famous
4
The Council comprised the Governor-General and three member employees of the East India
Company. The Council performed a dual function as both the legislative forum and the supreme
executive body of India. The law member's function was intended to be exclusively legislative, and
therefore did not entitle him to attend or vote at the Council meetings devoted to executive business.
Macaulay, however, was allowed to take a full role at executive as well as legislative meetings of the
Council.
5
For example, P. Knaplund, James Stephen and the British Colonial System, 1813-47 (1953); D.J.
Murray, The West Indies and the Development of Colonial Government, 1801-1834 (Oxford, 1965).
By a combination of ability, appetite for work and unwillingness to delegate, Stephen 'virtually ruled
the Colonial Empire'; Sir Henry Taylor, a friend and colleague at the Colonial Office, Autobiography
(1885), i, 223. Stephen was known to some as 'Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen'.
6
Leslie Stephen, Life of James Fitzjames Stephen (1895), 235, and Fitzjames Stephen, H.C.L., iii,
298, n.2.
7
See, for example, Macaulay to his sister Hannah, 21 October 1833 in G.O. Trevelyan, The Life
and Letters of Lord Macaulay (1876, New York, 1877), i, 296. James Mill, then Chief Examiner in the
Company (and effectively the highest official below the two Chairmen of Directors) was 'consulted'
and very 'handsomely' advised the Company to take Macaulay, Macaulay to Hannah Macaulay, ibid.,
1 November 1833, 300.